Investor Caltagirone: Monte dei Paschi-Banco BPM Merger Risks Italian Savings
Potential Impacts of the Monte dei Paschi and Banco BPM Merger
Background and Recent Developments
MILAN, May 14 (Reuters) - Italian businessman Francesco Gaetano Caltagirone said on Thursday that merging Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS) and Banco BPM could weaken the historic Tuscan bank and pose a risk for Italian savings.
Market speculation has risen in recent weeks over a long-mooted merger between Banco BPM and the world's oldest bank, in which Caltagirone is the second-largest investor.
Last week, BPM CEO Giuseppe Castagna said the bank was well positioned to benefit from Italian M&A opportunities and was examining all options.
Shareholder Influence and Voting Outcomes
Credit Agricole’s Role and Shareholder Dynamics
France's Credit Agricole CAGR.PA is the main shareholder of BPM, which in turn already owns 3.7% of MPS and played a key role in a fraught shareholder vote on April 15 that reinstated the Tuscan bank's ousted CEO Luigi Lovaglio.
Caltagirone backed the alternative CEO option in the vote.
Caltagirone’s Concerns Over the Merger
Risks to Local Heritage and Italian Savings
"I fear that the outcome of the recent shareholders' meeting will, on the one hand, facilitate the merger of MPS into BPM, thereby destroying something that has existed in Siena for five centuries, and, on the other hand, lead to a new assault on Italian savings," Caltagirone told Corriere della Sera.
Potential Shift in Headquarters and Economic Impact
He told the Italian newspaper in an interview that he had the impression that "there is strong pressure for BPM to absorb MPS" rather than the other way around, resulting in a shift of MPS headquarters to Milan, eroding local expertise and all the economic activities that were built around it over centuries.
(Reporting by Gianluca Semeraro, editing by Alexander Smith)
